"Jobs for Philosophers volume 194, to be published May 16, 2012, will be published online as JFP 194W. There will be no print edition. All ads scheduled for the print edition will appear online in JFP 194W. "

@Anon 1106a. Depends on a bunch of factors, but we get about 300 for metaphysics and fewer, maybe 200 for language. Btw, these are terrible AOSs to have, far too competitive and impacted. For all the people talking about how hard to get a job in professional philosophy, the best thing you can do is pick marketable areas (e.g., applied ethics). Get hired, then do metaphysics/language.

The number of applicants would differ a bit according to what school was doing the search. I imagine the number could end up being anywhere between 170-700. The higher end is really speculation on my part.

While I have recently served on a search committee which included Philosophy of Language as an AOS, it was one of a few possible areas of specialization that were preferred for the position. As this opening was at a smaller Liberal Arts School (undergraduate department only), the number of applicants was, perhaps, significantly lower than those on the radar of every Leiterphile in the US.

Hi, love your blog. My spouse is a recent continentalist PhD from a ranked school. No matter how you try to spin it, these numbers suck. There are too many philosophers, not enough jobs, and no change likely until the baby boomers start to retire and die. Shouldn't you be looking for exit strategies? This is a sincere question since we have been working out our answer to this for the past few months.

I suggest that we start a new thread topic: When should job applicants have to finish the Ph.D. for hiring purposes? In this tight job market, my anecdotal sense is that more institutions want the Ph.D. in hand, at least for a few months, if not a few years, if they're to be a serious candidate for a position. But the Leiter thread on the same topic seems to suggest otherwise. Lots of ABDs are getting hired, who either defend the week before they start teaching or start teaching and then defend a few months later. The suggestion that job candidates be told they must finish the Ph.D. first is thought to put undue financial pressure on them, since after they defend they lose institutional funding. However, on teh positive side, it might reduce the size of job applicant pools.

I may be a boomer, but at least I teach my students the division fallacy. I bet the majority of boomers in our profession have done a lot personally and politically to challenge the damage fellow money-grabbing boomers have done in moving to the Republithug party. There's a mindset here that is very troubling: that somehow I have a tenured job that younger people deserve by being just younger. If there were such a thing (as with rap), I'd challenge a lot of commentators here to a teach-off. Yeah, times are shitty for jobs, and I barely survived in the profession during such a time (early 80s), so I get that. But I didn't wish for people to die for my benefit. Jeez.

I was on a search committee this year at a SLAC and the head of the search committee insisted that we only give serious consideration to candidates who already had the PhD in hand. I thought about posting this on Leiter's thread, but didn't want to embarrass myself or my school. It's clear that the best schools don't do this. If you really want to hire an experienced teacher, though, then it makes some sense.

"When should job applicants have to finish the Ph.D. for hiring purposes?"

As with most questions about the market, the answer is "it depends." And the shitty thing is, you won't even know when it depends.

Since I've been at my university, we've hired multiple people. While in general we will consider advanced ABD who are close to finishing, this really depends on the search committee. I've been on a search where we all agreed to consider ABDs (and then hired one); I've been on a search where the other members of the committee insisted on someone who was already finished. If the pool of applicants is strong enough (and these days, it always is), a committee need not look at ABDs.

The only hard and fast answer I would give is this: you must be ready to defend before you start the job, if you are hired ABD. This is for a three reasons:1. Your sanity. Trying to finish and defend a dissertation while starting a new job is a hell I wouldn't wish on anyone.2. Your salary. In some cases (and this is the case at my university), we can hire you ABD but you cannot hold the rank of Assistant Professor until you complete the degree. So we would hire you as a lecturer, and you'd be "promoted" once you finish. But as a lecturer, you would make less money; also, the university would not be contributing to your retirement during that time. In the long run, these things matter.3. Your tenure clock. At my university, your tenure clock starts the minute you start working for us (if hired for a tenure-track position). Some may say this is pretty unfair, but the way it works here is that if you are not finished, you become a lecture...but your tenure close is already running. You go up for tenure 6 years after you are hired, not 6 years after you defend. And the real bitch of it is that completing and defending your dissertation does not count toward tenure; because those are expected at the time of hire (and we effectively waived that to then hire you as a lecturer), they don't count toward your research requirements. So in your 2-year review, you'll be expected to finish your PhD *and* maintain an active research agenda to work toward tenure. (This goes back to my first point.) No, not all university systems are like this, but mine is. And we are not the only one.

Does anyone ever wonder whether Nous and PPR should both have different Editors (or what some call editors in chief)?

One day someone should do some fancy statistical analysis of connections to Brown or Rutgers (since Sosa became associated with Rutgers, which was before he became a regular professor there) and having a paper published in Nous or PPR?

How many of Sosa's students, and partners of Sosa's students, have had papers published in Nous and/or PPR?

Of course, to some extent, the system does indeed work - top programs like Brown and Rutgers educate their PhD graduates well enough for them to publish on the merits in top journals such as Nous and PPR. Nonetheless, I am surprised that no one has yet done a fancy statistical analysis (and the research required to dig up and piece together the relevant data) to show that students of Sosa, partners of students of Sosa (and perhaps students of Sosa's colleagues at Brown and Rutgers) have a wildly disproportionate and scandalous record of publication in Nous and PPR.

Is this clear (or at least seemingly suspicious) to anyone else? Does anyone strongly disagree? Could we please have a very carefully worded and detailed post on this matter?

"One day someone should do some fancy statistical analysis of connections to Brown or Rutgers (since Sosa became associated with Rutgers, which was before he became a regular professor there) and having a paper published in Nous or PPR?"

Good rule of thumb: if something is important to you, do the legwork. I'd be happy to read your results, but I don't care enough to do the work myself.

"One day someone should do some fancy statistical analysis of connections to Brown or Rutgers (since Sosa became associated with Rutgers, which was before he became a regular professor there) and having a paper published in Nous or PPR?"

Then do it. When you are done come back and tell us. Until then please stop making accusations that you are admitting are completely unsupported by reliable empirical evidence. Discussing the sense you have of unfairness at these journals is not worth doing.

Thanks, 8:45AM. I realize now that I wasn't finding it because I hadn't paid my dues for this year. Seems to me that, even if access is blocked for this reason, there should at least be a link indicating where the JFP would be found in the event that one were to pay her dues. But I digress ... Thanks.